NCJ Number
224155
Journal
Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice Volume: 50 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2008 Pages: 187-209
Date Published
April 2008
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This study examined youth perceptions and experience concerning auto theft in Canada.
Abstract
The work found that a sizable proportion of the sample examined from a general population had thought of or engaged in auto theft behaviors, from thinking about stealing a vehicle, through riding in a stolen vehicle, to being caught stealing a vehicle. This group differed from youth who had neither thought of nor engaged in any form of auto theft in terms of some demographic characteristics, their beliefs about the factors that prevented them from auto theft, their perceptions of young auto thieves’ characteristics and motivations, and their perceptions of the problem and prevention of youth auto theft. It is noted that prior research on youth auto theft has been based mostly on young offenders who have been caught, as opposed to an examination of the general population of Canadian youth’s experiences of auto theft and their perceptions of auto theft. The article also notes that the findings have implications for targeting and developing youth auto theft prevention and intervention strategies, and highlights the importance of studying auto theft in the general population. The present study involved a sample of 779 youth attending 13 schools across British Columbia, Canada. The response rate was over 93 percent to a 10-section survey conducted in classrooms in grades 9 to 12. Tables, references, and appendix